Japan Space Agency Advances in Space-Based Solar Power

A solar flare erupts in this file photo of the sun taken in June 2011.

Associated Press

It’s one small 55-meter step for Japan’s aerospace industry, but perhaps a giant leap into developing a new energy source for mankind.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or Jaxa, said it succeeded in transmitting electric power wirelessly to a pinpoint target using microwaves, which is an essential technology needed for the realization of space-based solar power.

According to a spokesman at the agency, the researchers were able to transform 1.8 kilowatts of electric power into microwaves and transmit it with accuracy into a receiver located 55 meters away. The microwave was successfully converted into direct electrical current at the receiving end. The experiment was conducted Sunday in Hyogo prefecture in western Japan.

In space-based solar power generation, sunlight is gathered in geostationary orbit and transmitted to a receiver on earth. The Jaxa spokesman told Japan Real Time that Sunday's experiment was the first in the world to send out high-output microwaves wirelessly to a small target.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, more solar energy reaches the earth every hour than humans use in a year. Unlike solar panels set on earth, satellite-based solar panels can capture the energy around the clock and are not affected by weather conditions.

If implemented, microwave-transmitting solar satellites would be set up approximately 35,000 kilometers from earth. Jaxa says that a receiver set up on earth with an approximately three-kilometer radius could create up to one gigawatt of electricity, which is about the same as one nuclear reactor.

While the energy is transmitted in same microwaves used in microwave ovens, it does not fry a bird or an airplane traveling on its path because of its low energy density, according to the Jaxa spokesman.